


Changeling

by JoAsakura



Category: Mass Effect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 12:03:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>spoilers for the Citadel DLC.</p><p>Starting to work out my feelings :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Changeling

For a few glorious moments, he was real.

Looking at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, Shepard’s his spare fatigues resting on his shoulders. It looked right.

The Normandy was his now. Not the traitor with almost as much synthetics under his skin as a geth. Not the man who forgot his humanity. It was his.

And he was John Shepard.

The New Shepard. Human. Flesh and bone under his skin. Maya had told him this was what he’d been bred for. This was what he’d been meant to do. It was the only choice he’d been given, the only path allowed and he followed it gladly.

He’d taken the old Shepard’s breath and his life and their shared skin was his alone.

And then, suddenly, it wasn’t.

~~

The ozone smell of biotics was thick in the shuttle bay as the Normandy rocketed across the wards and the traitor was there with his hand outstretched. There wasn’t any anger in his eyes, only sadness, and that made it all the worse.

“Take my hand!” He shouted over the roar of the engines and the citadel rushing past beneath them.

“And then what?” The man who had been John Shepard for a few, brief, glorious moments asked, dangling alone.

“And then you live!” The Old Shepard said, his companions holding him fast and giving him balance.

There wasn’t room in their shared skin for them both.

And suddenly the choice was clear.

He would take this shared skin, the face of the man who was reaching for him, shouting in horror, and make of it what he would.

And with a grin, he fell away into the gloom of the buildings below.


End file.
